My theme this Eastertide is the way that Jesus changed who we are AFTER the resurrection – while most of our studies are on the person Jesus BEFORE the crucifixion, what happened after is what changed us permanently.
But the truth is, even those of us who call ourselves believers doubt at times. In fact, our very faith should be based not on blindly accepting what we have been told, but in asking questions until our faith becomes our own. It is OK to ask questions, because it is there in our doubt that our very faith is forged.
II really loved Thomas. He is both a saint and a doubter. If the Show Me State, here in Missouri had a patron saint, I believe it would be Thomas.
Earlier in John's Gospel, there's a scene where Jesus is talking to his disciples about going back to Judea, where they had tried to stone him, most of the disciples tell him not to go, Thomas did the opposite, He says, “Let us all go, that we might die with him!”
I think Thomas would have a lot in common with many of us here in Missouri. We wear our hearts on our sleeves, we are loyal, and at our very hearts, we are realists. When Gary and I were first engaged, I gave him a card with Ziggy on the front. It said, "It's you and me against the world." And on the inside it read: "And I think we are going to get creamed." Now THAT is Thomas.
Our text says that the disciples were together in the house where they met when Jesus came to them; but Thomas wasn't there. I wonder where exactly he was. Maybe he was out trying to land a job, now that the Jesus movement had come to a dramatic and horrific end.
Maybe he was at the local pub trying to forget the pain and disappointment he was wallowing in. And maybe he was just out, alone, because hanging out with the disciples was too hard now that Jesus was dead.
At any rate, at some point these disciples who had experienced the miracle of Jesus run into Thomas. “You're never going to guess what happened!” they tell him. He doesn't just not guess, he doesn't believe.
You see, Thomas was there. He saw Jesus die. And like you and me, he knew something true. When people die they don't come back. They REALLY don't come back. Dead is dead.
He is not only no longer a disciple, but he is on the outside. They say they got to see Jesus, and he wasn't even there.
We can criticize Thomas, but it is hard to be outside of a miracle and still believe in it. They saw it, he didn’t. They were together, he was alone. He saw Jesus die. Tell him something he could believe and he would believe it, but for now, he was sure they were all deceived. Maybe it was the bread or the wine, but it couldn’t be Jesus returned to life. THAT was unbelievable.
So what happened AFTER he saw Jesus in Person? He changed. The Church tradition is that he went the furthest of all of the disciples - all of the way to India, to tell them that he had seen Jesus with his very own eyes, touched him with his very own hands, and because they trusted his story - they believed, and there are still churches there today that were founded by him.
He went from doubt to faith, and then being the person he was, he acted on that faith. He was convinced, not because someone else told him something, but because of what he knew to be true.
In today’s world, we talk a lot about things that we trust. I regularly test stories and accounts I see on Facebook and the Internet with fact checkers that I have learned to trust, because I tend to be a doubter. I doubt news, I check bias, I research facts. I simply can’t find it in myself to blindly trust. I choose to think for myself, and I hope that all of you do the same.
The younger we are, the easier it is to be trusting. But, The longer we have lived, the more pain we've endured, the more products we have tried that didn't work, the more times we've been deceived, the less likely we are to be taken in or deceived simply by hearing that something is true. We are not born doubters; those of us who want to survive learn enough to be doubters. We don't blindly trust.
I believe that all believers should have the same courage of doubt, should ask themselves what is real. One of my brothers has reconnected with his childhood sweetheart and first wife, and will be marrying her. As a part of that process, he visited her pastor to talk to him. He mentioned that after the service, he always went back to and studied the text that the pastor had preached on.
What shocked him, and me for that matter, was what this particular pastor believed. He told my brother that doing that violated his authority and that it meant Joe didn’t trust the church authority. Good Christians needed to trust what the pastor told them. Needless to say, Joe and his future wife (sometime in late May or early June) will be attending a very different church where he is allowed to question and to doubt.
I have always encouraged members to seek their own truth in the scriptures I preach. I don’t criticize, I get excited when I know you study the passage I preach. And I want to point out to you that now that we have the pew Bibles that were removed during CoVid back in the pews, we are including the page number in the bulletin so that you can follow along and ask your own questions.
As you know, the traditional church has been losing members over the last 60 years or so. But in Europe, they have started something new – it is called a “Thomas Mass” for skeptics and other good Christians. The services are held about six times a year across Europe.
Starting in Helsinki in 1988, ministers, artists, musicians, and civic leaders worked together to create a prayerful service that would again fill their cathedral, not with departed churchgoers, but with doubters, seekers, searchers, and believers alike.
Recognizing that Europe had become a continent of skeptics, they named the service after Thomas “the Doubter.” It immediately began to spread across Europe, and services are prayerful and participatory rather than passive.
People engage with God at prayer stations, painting walls, and creative expressions of the sacraments. It is a place to seek the answers they need.
Thomas cannot believe based on others' testimony. It isn't going to happen. But this doesn't seem to bother Jesus, who doesn't scold but comes alongside Thomas and invites him to place his hand in Jesus' side. In the end, Thomas believes, saying, “My Lord and my God!”
If you are here today, don't be afraid to doubt. Jesus welcomes all of us, skeptics, doubters, those whose doubt has turned to faith. For he takes who we are and meets us where we are. And in that meeting our faith becomes real.
I love the way this story ends as Jesus talks about us and our questions. He says, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” He doesn’t expect anyone to believe instantly, he says, “have come to believe.” Jesus gets Thomas and he gets us.
When I spoke with my brother to get his permission to tell his story, he came up with a verse that I felt was especially relevant. It is in Mathew, chapter 7, verses 7 and 8. It is the perfect verse for those of us who continue to ask questions and to wonder.
7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
Continue in your search for truth, because it is only in seeking that you will find.
